Yehuda Amichai

After you left me I let a dog smell at My chest and my belly. It will fill its nose

On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery, a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs, abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer

A man doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn't have seasons enough to have

A man doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn't have seasons enough to have

They amputated Your thighs off my hips. As far as I'm concerned

A precise woman with a short haircut brings order to my thoughts and my dresser drawers, moves feelings around like furniture

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy. An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father

And we shall not get excited. Because a translator May not get excited. Calmly, we shall pass on Words from man to son, from one tongue

Before the gate has been closed, before the last question is posed, before I am transposed.

Do not accept these rains that come too late. Better to linger. Make your pain An image of the desert. Say it's said

A night drive to Ein Yahav in the Arava Desert, a drive in the rain. Yes, in the rain. There I met people who grow date palms,

Forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light in the backyard so it stays lit all the next day But then it is the light that makes you remember.

God-Full-of-Mercy, the prayer for the dead. If God was not full of mercy, Mercy would have been in the world,

God has pity on kindergarten children, He pities school children less. But adults he pities not at all.

People in a hall that's lit so brightly It hurts Spoke of religion

Half the people in the world love the other half, half the people hate the other half. Must I because of this half and that half go wandering

I don't Know if history repeats itself But I do know that you don't. I remember that city was divided

I have become very hairy all over my body. I'm afraid they'll start hunting me because of my fur. My multicolored shirt has no meaning of love,

I know a man who photographed the view he saw from the window of the room where he made love

All night the army came up from Gilgal To get to the killing field, and that's all. In the ground, warf and woof, lay the dead.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, Then let my right be forgotten. Let my right be forgotten, and my left remember.

On a roof in the Old City Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight: The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,

Let the memorial hill remember instead of me, that's what it's here for. Let the par in-memory-of remember, let the street that's-named-for remember,

There is a street where they sell only red meat And there is a street where they sell only clothes and perfumes. And there is a day when I see only cripples and the blind

Memorial day for the war dead.    Add now the grief of all your losses to their grief, even of a woman that has left you.    Mix

My child wafts peace. When I lean over him, It is not just the smell of soap.

The memory of my father is wrapped up in white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits

Near the wall of a house painted to look like stone, I saw visions of God.

Out of three or four in the room One is always standing at the window. Forced to see the injustice amongst the thorns,

On Rabbi Kook's Street I walk without this good man, A streiml he wore for prayer

Once a great love cut my life in two. The first part goes on twisting at some other place like a snake cut in two.

The end was quick and bitter. Slow and sweet was the time between us, slow and sweet were the nights

1 Mr. Beringer, whose son fell at the Canal that strangers dug

Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west, Latin writing, from west to east. Languages are like cats:

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters, with four dead and eleven wounded.

The first rain reminds me Of the rising summer dust. The rain doesn't remember the rain of yesteryear.

The little park planted in memory of a boy who fell in the war begins to resemble him

I passed by the school where I studied as a boy and said in my heart: here I learned certain things and didn't learn others. All my life I have loved in vain

Visits of condolence is all we get from them. They squat at the Holocaust Memorial, They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall

Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing of the one you love so that on the day of loss you'll be able to say: last seen

"What kind of a person are you," I heard them say to me. I'm a person with a complex plumbing of the soul, Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system

Not the peace of a cease-fire not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, but rather

Yad Mordechai. Those who fell here still look out the windows like sick children who are not allowed outside to play.

You mustn't show weakness and you've got to have a tan. But sometimes I feel like the thin veils